Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Essay Example

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick What an amazing start of the book! Richard Deckard, the protagonist, and his wife, Iran, wake up to argue about adjusting the settings of each other’s Penfield wave transmitter. While Iran perceives her husband as a crud cop that kills androids for a living, Rick perceives her wife as a “human vulture” that is out to deplete his most crucial resources: time and money. Iran willfully sinks into depression and sadness despite owning a Penfield mood organ.

Rick keeps to himself the secret ownership of an electric sheep. His desire to own a real animal is frustrated by the many androids he must kill to collect $1000 bounty. Dave Holden, Rick’s fellow bounty hunter goes through a dreadful encounter with Nexus-6. He gets injured in the process and Rick heads an operation that is meant to find and retire the remaining Nexus-6’s. This operation succeeds when Rick finds and kills Polokov. Eventually, Rick retires from bounty hunting after witnessing Resch’s killing of Luba Luft, an android impersonating an opera singer.

He terms this killing an absence of empathy towards androids. Could Rick engaging in doublespeak? Why does he abandon bounty hunting on the basis of the inhuman killing of Luft after participating in the elimination of Polokov? I believe that this story presents a paradox. The aspect of empathy that develops in Rick contrasts sharply the life he has lived. The main questions arising from the story are, “How is hypocrisy demonstrated of Dick’s future society?” and “How does the theme of mind control manifest in the character of Buster Friendly?

” The aspect of decay versus regeneration is emphasized when Dick develops a world that is in peril. The dust of nuclear fallout covers the landscape. This decay is metaphysically represented by kipple. Against this backdrop, Dick suggests that the world can survive and regenerate through decay. This is the tragic irony of the story. Work CitedPhilip, Dick. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Retrieved from http://www.ciampini.info/file/ferrari/DO%20ANDROIDS%20DREAM%20OF%20ELECTRIC%20SHEEP.pdf